Gazing into each other’s eyes on a sun-kissed bank beside the River Dart, TV presenter Richard Keys and new wife Lucie Rose soaked up the applause.
In a stunning wedding gown, Lucie glowed during the £20,000 ceremony in Kingswear, Devon. Richard, who is 31 years her senior, scrubbed up well in a cream Hugo Boss suit.
But while the open-air civil ceremony at the weekend was a joyous occasion on the face of it, some things were less harmonious behind the scenes.
Neither of Richard’s children being present was perhaps the biggest clue.
In fact, 66-year-old Richard’s relationship with Lucie, 35, has left a trail of destruction. The saga began seven years ago when Richard’s then-wife Julia saw incriminating messages from Lucie on his phone.
He was asleep when his mobile lit up with “intimate” WhatsApps.
It brought a swift end to 36 years of marriage, which came at a time when she was recovering from thyroid cancer.
Things were about to get worse as Richard’s daughter Jemma revealed that lawyer Lucie was her friend.
Lucie and Richard are understood to have been introduced in 2016 by a mutual acquaintance on the expat social circuit in Qatar, where he was working as a presenter for BeIn Sports.
Enraged, former Hollyoaks actress Jemma began bombarding Lucie with abusive late-night text messages.
One referred to Lucie as “the filthiest sl**”. In another, Jemma warned: “I’m watching every move you make. You don’t know what’s coming.”
She was arrested in a morning raid and charged with harassment.
The case was later dropped, but the damage had been done.
Jemma, who suffered from alcoholism, had plunged deeper into her addiction after learning who her dad was having the affair with. She said in 2018: “I was under the illusion Lucie was the complete opposite of the person she’s turned out to be.
“I thought she was my friend. I was devastated, distraught and angry.
“I can’t justify what I did. But I felt like my father had been stolen from me, and the affair has destroyed my family and my relationship with Dad. He had been my idol all my life and, although I still love him, I don’t know who he is any more. I have nothing to say to him.”
Her mum Julia said in 2018: “Richard’s affair didn’t just devastate my world, but the world of our children Jemma and Josh too.”
A source close to Julia said she was unaware of the wedding until she received a text from Richard two hours before he tied the knot
But speaking publicly yesterday, she wished the couple well.
She said: “If that’s what makes him happy then I’m happy for him. As for me it’s all in the past now. I’m in a new relationship and I’m really happy and that’s all I want to focus on. It looks as if he is happy so all the best to them.”
Richard, who in 2011 was sacked in disgrace from his £500,000-a-year job fronting Sky Sports’ Premier League football coverage after making derogatory remarks about a female assistant referee, proposed to Lucie two years ago.
Speaking ahead of the ceremony, he said: “I’m a very lucky man, although feeling a bit nervous...
“People think I might be a bit long in the tooth but I don’t care.”
Richard said in 2019 that his wife had been in remission from cancer for seven years before they split. He also insisted: “I didn’t fall in love with a friend of my daughter’s.”
Yesterday Richard hit back at some of the coverage of the wedding.
He reiterated that “when my first marriage collapsed my wife was not suffering with cancer”.
Richard added that Lucie “was never my daughter’s friend – let alone her best friend. They met twice”.
He said the break-up of his marriage “did not ‘wreck’ my children’s lives... one was 28, the other 32”.
Richard added that after Jemma’s “disgusting and threatening messages” Lucie “decided not to pursue” the case because it “was hurting me and would only have caused Jemma more harm”.
